Impulse purchases, in which an unplanned decision to purchase a product is made at a point of purchase, account, by some estimates, for as much as 50% of retail sales.
Merchants are, therefore, highly desirous of extending the persuasive power of television, and the interactivity of the Internet, to influence potential customers when they are at, or close to, a point of purchase. In particular, they would like to provide high impact, location-based advertising that reaches potential customers physically at, or near, a location where the items being advertised can be viewed or purchased.
Furthermore, other than the web, merchants have no way to interact with consumers beyond the threshold of their physical space.
In addition to increasing sales, merchants are also desirous of using such location-based systems to capture related information such as the contact information of a potential customer who showed an interest in a product, but did not commit to a purchase. Such contact information may be useful in, for instance, further targeted marketing of the product.
Existing attempts to provide point-of-purchase advertising include location-based advertising on location-based media such as “Out-of-home” digital media networks. These are essentially private television channels run by companies, organizations and advertisers in locations such as shopping malls, retail chains, or franchise operations that run conventional, television promotional material at or close to the point of purchase.
Other examples of point-of-purchase advertising include the interactive retail marketing systems designed to help consumers to find specific information on products and services. These include touch-screens, at or close to the point of purchase, used to promote products or to offer sales promotions or details such as pricing and availability.
There are, however, no existing point-of-purchase presentation systems that optimally leverage the combined power of high quality video displays and Internet-like personalized interactivity.
For example, a consumer looking in through the window of a store cannot operate the interactive systems detailed above, because none of them can be navigated remotely. This is problematic for a merchant wishing to capture the attention of consumers walking past their store window—especially when their store is closed. Furthermore, these systems cannot capture specific user information such as a mobile phone number without the user entering that data into the system.
Some advertising billboards or posters in retail spaces have been used to provide additional information to passersby by downloading that information into a personal digital assistant (PDA) using wireless technology. For instance, AdAlive Inc. of Lexington, Mass. and Wideray Corp. of San Francisco, Calif., are examples of companies that have marketed systems for consumers to download additional advertising information from existing advertising billboards or posters into Palm handheld computers or cell phones using wireless technology, such as infra-red transmission or the Bluetooth protocol. However, these systems typically use the low visual impact, small screen of a handheld device to display the additional information, and lack a feedback loop back to the actual advertising message. Because of this, the systems fail to maximize their impact on consumers. For example, they are unable to update the primary advertising medium, the existing advertising billboard or poster, by changing the content in response to feedback.
Internet-connected advertising systems, sometimes referred to as Out-of-home digital media networks or narrowcast networks, provide advertising that can be sent to specific locations, at specific times from a central control. One example of a company providing this service is Captivate Media Inc. of Westford, Mass., which provides video content to a network of screens in elevators. The screens are not interactive and have no direct way of measuring their effectiveness.
As with television, billboard advertisers have to wait many weeks or months before learning of the effectiveness of their campaigns.
Direct marketing systems, such as direct mail, target specific demographics with sales offers. The more accurate the marketer can be in targeting their required customer, the more likely it will be that they will achieve a higher “conversion rate,” that is the rate at which prospective sales are converted into actual sales. Such systems typically have low conversion rates below 2%, and are slow to feed back performance metrics, in turn leading to slow improvement cycles.
Closed-loop direct marketing systems, such as direct email or website banner advertisements, improve the information the marketer has about the potential purchaser as they connect marketers with their customers in a continuous feed-back cycle, often capturing customer's reactions and strategically integrating those reactions into a targeted promotion such that the results are dramatically enhanced. Such campaigns invariably appear as “junk mail” as they necessarily target a wide group of prospective customers in order to convert a subset of that group. This results in a poor consumer reaction and experience. With a conversion rate around 2%, they are more economic for marketers than traditional direct mail and they are better suited to feed back performance metrics. However, the promotions are regarded as invasive and frequently undesirable.
Mobile communications devices, capable of browsing the Internet, are becoming more sophisticated every day and are technically capable of providing many, if not all of the features of a computer connected to the Internet. Whilst many people have access to services on the web via a mobile communications device, the reality is that devices designed for mobility tend to have smaller screens than desktop computers, televisions, and out-of-home screens. As a result, products and services are difficult to discover and/or access. Flipping open a phone, selecting a web browser, typing in a web site address, then clicking or searching for the specific product information can be too complex for many consumers. It has been claimed that every “click” on a website can lose up 25-33% of a website's visitors, which gives the marketer a maximum of 4 clicks to address consumers' interests. Marketers are, therefore, keenly aware of the need to reach consumers with the minimum number of clicks.
Web-based systems can leverage information pertaining to user's preferences, by using “cookies” on a user's computer and inviting the user to click through various offers. These systems are not suited to retail environments, as the users are away from their own computers.
Internet-connected kiosks sited in retail environments can automate sales and promotions. These systems target one customer at a time and typically serve fixed applications such as tickets, internet connection, or cash machines. A problem with kiosks is that the user is required to touch or type to engage with the system, i.e. physical contact is required in order to engage, therefore the system cannot be placed behind a physical protective barrier, such as behind the window of the storefront and still allow users to access the system. A further problem is that these systems are not ideally placed externally due to weather. The system can't support more than one user at a time.
Telephone systems and call centers with interactive voice response systems can provide 24/7 support for callers, but they do not provide visual information to the caller.
What is needed is a method and system for location-based display of multi-media content that overcomes these problems, particularly the lack of interactivity or the reliance on small, low impact screens.